In recent years, in order to address environmental problems, activity for reducing the amount of CO2 discharged is spread and distribution by an electronic file using an electronic mail etc., and an electronic filing are increased to reduce a quantity of printed copies, however, it is realistically difficult to eliminate printing on a recording sheet in companies etc. Thus, in companies etc., by performing so-called ecology-printing to reduce the number of recording sheets to be printed, efforts to reduce recording sheets, toner, and power consumption at the time of printing are being made. Specifically, the ecology-printing as described above is able to be performed, for example, by switching color printing, single-sided printing, and one in one (one-up) for printing one page on a recording sheet to monochrome printing, double-sided printing, and N in one (N-up: N is two or more) for performing aggregating printing of a plurality of pages on a recording sheet, respectively.
For example, in the case of performing copying with an MFP (digital multi-functional peripheral) etc., provided with a printer function and a copying function, when a system manager etc., previously sets environmentally-friendly copying conditions such as N in one copying and double-sided copying as initial set values, it is possible to execute copying under the copying conditions of the initial set values unless a user intentionally changes the copying conditions in each copying. This makes it possible to perform ecology-printing relatively easily.
However, in the case where printing data is transmitted from a PC (personal computer) etc., used by a user to an MFP to perform printing with the MFP, a setting of printing conditions of a printer driver installed on the PC needs to be changed to conditions of ecology-printing, while in the case where a plurality of PCs are connected to the MFP through a network, printing conditions of a printer driver in each of the plurality of PCs need to be changed, thus posing a problem of taking labor in changing processing.
Moreover, since installation of a printer driver on a PC is performed by a user as needed, even a manager of the MFP is hard to recognize all PCs on which the printer driver is installed, thus making it difficult to change printing conditions of the printer driver of all PCs to ecology-printing.
Against this, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2005-332100 describes a print setting sharing support apparatus in which initial set values of a printer driver whose printing conditions have been previously set by a manager etc., are able to be downloaded with a Web function and incorporated in the printer driver, enabling to share the printing conditions of the printer driver among a plurality of PCs. Moreover, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2006-48433 describes a printer driver capable of setting initial set values of many users to conditions set by a manager after installation. According to this, when an installed printer driver is activated, if it is determined that the printer driver does not perform initialization set by the manager with a flag, it is configured so that an initializing file is obtained from a printer to perform initialization.
However, in the case of the technology described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2005-332100 above, in order to obtain the initial set values (printing conditions) of the printer driver, it is required that the print setting sharing support apparatus is accessed from a PC of a user and a printing setting desired by the user is selected and downloaded from a plurality of printing settings registered in the print setting sharing support apparatus. Accordingly, since the printing setting to be downloaded is entrusted to the decision of the user, the printing setting of the printer driver is not able to be always shared among the plurality of PCs.
Moreover, in order to share the initial set values of the printer driver among the plurality of PCs, it is also considered to transmit the initial set values through a network, however, it is impossible to change the initial set values of the printer driver in the case of a PC which is not in an energized status or a notebook-sized PC which is carried out when going outside. Thus, there is a problem that the manager of the printer needs to transmit repeatedly until the initial set values are received by each of the PCs, taking excess labor.
Moreover, in the technology described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2006-48433 above, the printer driver obtains the initializing file from the printer only when the installed printer driver is activated for the first time, and update of the initializing file is not executed once the initializing file has been obtained. For example, in the case where the manager changes the printing conditions for ecology-printing or changes an option (hardware) configuration such as a double-sided printing mechanism and a large capacity cassette (LCC), the initial set values of the printer driver stored in the printer are changed. In addition, each of the PCs needs to change the initial set values of the own printer driver accordingly, however, there is a problem that it is impossible to reflect this change after the initializing file has been obtained as described above.